


Of Orpheus and Icarus (and Other Fatal Flaws)

by MissWoodhouse



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (just a bit of a nerd), (note: I am NOT a classicist), And lots of Afterlife / Underworld Metaphors, Discussion of the Canonical Overdose, M/M, Mixing my Mythologies, but no actual character death, if Johnson were a classicist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25874971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissWoodhouse/pseuds/MissWoodhouse
Summary: Kent and Jack introspection, in alternating POVsAre you ever really after the aftermath? Sometimes the odyssey home lasts longer than the war.(In which I mix and match my mythology.)
Relationships: Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	Of Orpheus and Icarus (and Other Fatal Flaws)

**Author's Note:**

> Because someone’s been listening to too much Hadestown. (Me, that someone is me.)

I.

The thing they don’t tell you about Orpheus and Eurydice is that you’ll both spend the rest of your lives wondering whether it’s safe to look each other in the eye. How can you tell if you’ve made it yet when there’s no signpost to mark that you’ve left the gates of hell?

II. Kent (Styx and Stones)

You find him drowning. And maybe he’s been drowning for a while now, only you thought you were both enjoying the swim.

He’s swallowed handfuls of…something. And washed it down. And you find him gasping for air on the bathroom floor, but he’s sinking like a lead weight.

You find him wading into a deep, dark river, and you aren’t sure if he’s got stones in his pockets or coins to pay the ferryman – all you know is that you can’t let him reach the distant shore.

And you clutch at him, and call for help, and all the while you’re pleading. And you pray. You pray to any death-god who might hear you – what does it matter when the bargain’s all the same? Anything. You’ll give up anything to drag him kicking and screaming back to life.

“Anything?” the Fates ask you, “Even him?”

III. Jack (Stairway to…?)

The first thing they tell you is “no.”

Maybe not the first thing, but the first thing that matters.

No draft. No pills. No hockey. At least for a while.

And all of that means no Kent.

Not that you listen.

You can’t have the pills or the hockey, but the draft at least you can watch. You can watch Kent.

You can’t see him. Can’t let him see you like this. Can’t look and see the shame in his eyes. But you can watch him, so you do.

You watch the draft, and read the articles, and Kent flies to Vegas and starts a career that should have belonged to the both of you.

You watch Kent climb this ladder towards everything you ever dreamed about – everything you ever dreaded too – and you’re stuck at the bottom. No, worse than the bottom. He’s climbing and you’ve been sliding backwards down into the depths of despair.

And as you watch him, you start climbing – slowly, so slowly. Kent’s storeys and storeys above you and some days it feels like you’re climbing up the down escalator. But you’re climbing too.

And the goal feels impossible, unreachable - like you’re slogging your way through a lifetime of purgatory and he’s already reached the promised land.

Maybe, once you join him there, you’ll feel ready to look him in the eye.

IV. Kent (Road Through Hell)

You’re on a circle of ice in the middle of the desert, and Jack’s two and a half thousand miles away, and you wonder where this ranks in Dante’s inferno.

They won’t let you see him. He won’t let you see him? He won’t answer your calls, anyway, your texts.

Maybe he’s in some fancy, rich folks’ rehab and they’ve taken his phone away.

Because you know how this goes, okay?

The price for dragging someone up from the underworld is that you can’t look back.

You have to trust that they’re behind you, that the voice in your ears isn’t the trick of some ghost.

(You hear the ghosts every night – and see them too – and you wake up and can’t remember whether you found him in time, or not.)

But the thing is, the thing is that this wasn’t part of the deal. This isn’t the way the game is meant to be played. If you call “Marco” in a pool with your eyes closed and no one says “Polo” then you open your eyes.

Jack’s okay now. Jack’s better - that’s what everyone says. Jack’s in college, and playing hockey, and you’ve got a Cup and this was the goal.

If only you could believe it.

Maybe if you could just see him, all of it would feel real.

V. Jack (Between a Stanley and Charybdis)

Kent comes to visit, he comes to Samwell, with a cup ring and a gleam in his eye.

The light catches him in the doorframe and you’re taking intro to photography this semester, and you think if you could capture the image then he’d be Orpheus – looking back from the doorway, only Eurydice hasn’t made it yet.

And you look at him, and you feel the tug. That crippling spiral of self-doubt – that never-going-to-make-it, never-get-to-have-this whirlpool of all your dark thoughts pulling you back to the underworld.

No!

You’ve come too far - you’ve put in too much effort (never enough effort) and not come far enough – to let him poke and prod and push you into a backslide.

Who does he think he is, turning up like this, when he’s already made it and your journey is nowhere near done?

Doesn’t he know that he’s dangerous?

VI. Kent (Spears and Spurs)

You’ve been to parties, okay? You’re familiar with the drugs and the drinking and the poor life choices. Your misspent youth is the stuff of legends and, to be honest, you’ve never really stopped.

But college is something else.

There’s the delicate blend of uppers and downers and self-medication that you and Jack got so wrong back in Juniors and then there’s this…this Lotus Eating.

From the stoner with the mustache making bathtub punch to the honest to gods baker in the kitchen, you look around and you can’t believe Jack is wasting his time with amateurs like these.

He’s been Achilles, dicking around in his tent while the big boys go to battle, for years now. If the dude can crush the NCAA like it’s a cakewalk, what the hell is he waiting for – a personalized invitation back into the fold of the NHL? Eurydice’s on land again, but still scampering away to hide every time you turn around.

So what gets Achilles back into battle? Patroclus. Patroclus who goes to war. Who picks up some flashy armor and the reins to a chariot, and disrupts the status quo.

If only you’d remembered that Patroclus was his lover’s real Achilles heel.

VII. Jack (Waxen Wingers)

Icarus followed in his father’s footsteps, until he burnt and crashed and drowned.

Icarus soared until he didn’t, was invincible until he wasn’t.

Was drawn too close to something bright and golden and irresistible until he burnt up like a moth caught in a flame.

Your wings are singed, and you think if Icarus had lived, he’d have crawled into a cave, lost himself in his father’s labyrinth, hid away from the daylight like the hunter who shot an arrow that almost killed the sun.

Kent shows up again, ruins a perfect evening just when the future feels like it’s in your grasp again. And maybe that’s a blessing in disguise.

A necessary reminder. An inverse Trojan horse.

Because you’d almost let yourself want again. Almost, almost let yourself have again. And then he sucked you back into his orbit and you remembered just what gravity can do.

Because Kent’s not the only sun in your life now - and he’s as a attractive as ever but you know that sun’s just another word for a fiery ball of gas.

Even when sun feels like warmth radiating from an oven, like a golden laugh after checking practice, like heaven made of apples and maple sap and bits of all the other fruits of the earth.

So you ride a metal bird back to where the sun cuts sharp as ice, and wax turns brittle like maple sugar candy in the snow. And you know you’d be a fool to fly again on waxen wings.

VIII. Kent (Trials of Psyche)

Psyche lost Cupid through her own foolishness, until she went about some labors and got him back.

And that’s been your game plan for a while now. So Jack got burnt, and he got spooked – what are the plays that will bring him home again?

Only Jack was more than singed with a tallow candle. Jack nearly died.

(And it’s not like you’ve forgotten that. You’ll never forget that).

But that’s been your game plan – even when he wouldn’t follow you into the desert, even when he pushed you away and you both started screaming. It’s the game plan right up until you face him on the ice.

Because the Jack you see there in front of you isn’t the Jack you were expecting – you’re not sure he’s even one you’d recognize. You thought his Cupid was off sulking until your Psyche had done enough, suffered enough, waited long enough to win him back. But he looks happier than you these days.

And clearly isn’t waiting.

And you see red. Red like blood on the ice, an ace of hearts with a rip down the middle, the goal lighting up as you feed all of it into your game. Because metaphorically, apparently you’ve been using different rule books, but here – out on the ice – you know how this game is played.

And maybe later, once the rage wears off and you’re not so overwhelmed with it every time you picture how happy he looked, you’ll remember that Psyche’s weren’t the only trials.

Maybe you’ll remember Heracles. How he flew into a rage, and went too far, and nothing could ever bring back the things he lost. How his trials weren’t about winning a reward, but about redemption. About growth.

And no, Jack wasn’t your fault. Maybe wasn’t anyone’s fault. But you’ve fucked up because of it, and you’ve grown from it too.

So maybe the end goal, the one you really should have been aiming for, isn’t earning Jack back, but finding you. Because the smile on his face that night – when he didn’t know you were watching him – it looked pretty great actually.

And you live in a gambling city, and your face is on the billboards, so you bet it would look even better on you.

And you’re willing to wager some stakes for it.

IX. Jack (Put A Ring Around the Sun)

Persephone never meant to wind up in the Underworld either. She Fell.

Maybe for Hades’ tricks, or maybe in love.

By the time she returned to the sunlight – for better or worse – she had eaten the pomegranate, and her world would never be the same again.

She came back married for one thing

You want to get married, you think.

You thought Samwell was purgatory, and if it was, it was the kind that’s transformational. The kind you come out better for, and then you get to bask in a radiant, heavenly glow.

But the glow isn’t what you thought it was. Isn’t the sheen of an NHL ice rink, the flash of lights when a puck goes in, or even the sparkle of flashbulbs bouncing off a Stanley Cup.

It’s the first rays of sun through Faber’s windows during a pre-dawn checking practice, Bitty’s hair in the Georgia sunlight (and later that night, under the flares of Fourth of July fireworks), the sparkle in his eye as he’s chirping you across the kitchen.

And you don’t think you’d do it this way over again – the overdose caused too much pain to too many people you care about – but these days you can’t feel sorry about the way it all turned out.

Samwell anyway. And the Falcs. But Bitty most of all.

Because maybe you needed to cocoon down in the safe, dark earth for a bit, if it means knowing how to appreciate it when you find your way back to the sun.

X.

The world is home to many truths. You’ll never cross through the same water twice, or come back from the underworld the person you were before. But you can bury a seed beneath the earth, and with tending and care and luck, grow it into something new.

The thing they don’t tell you about Persephone is that maybe she wasn’t trapped in Hades – maybe she planted herself like a pomegranate seed. And then she bloomed.


End file.
